Artik

I'm obviously biased but I think Android tablet with direct USB connection to ASI533 would be way cheaper and flexible.

The only "advantage" is you may probably get more immersive view when looking into "eyepiece" but it is the only thing I see

(Disclosure I'm the author of OpenLiveStacker open-source app that does actual live stacking and talks to external camera)

New release 29 - support of planetary stacking, quality filters and performance improvements

New Experimental Features

• Added implementation of planetary stacking - with post-processing based on Richardson-Lucy deconvolution and sharpening
• Added support of image quality filters: sharpness, brightness, registration quality

New features

• The post processing and stacking are separated into two different threads allowing to stack at much higher frame-rates
• Post processing now can skip frames if more than one are already for post processing to improve latency and performance
• Added logging to UVC driver

Bug fixes

• Support of UVC devices that do not report default or resolution values is added

New manual entries:

• Planetary Post processing: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual#planetary-stacking-controls
• Filters: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual#filters

Demo of Sun live stacking:

Version 27 is released to both github and Google Play

New features

 - Added support of linear gradient removal caused by light pollution.

Bug fixes:

- Changed the depth of computing queue from 20 to 10 frames to prevent memory overloading under high loads.
- ToupTek driver fixes: Fixed ROI calculations when binning in use
- ToupTek driver fixes: Removed frame rate limits for future solar/planetary imaging
- ToupTek driver fixes: Removed RGB image from mono cameras
- Now frame-rate limits are are not shown if they aren't known
- Fixed "json" error - in case of no camera detected - now proper error is given

Here an example of gradient removal (after and before)

On 12/03/2024 at 17:02, tico said:

How much weight can the Nexstar SE8 mount hold?

It holds C8 - so it is around 5kg... without motors probably more.

I took it yesterday to some 1/2 dark location (Bortle 5) I was there before with the 1/2 working mount.

Such a huge difference: 

• No need to realign if somebody bumps into my tripod (several times)
• No need to worry about batteries
• It reaches zenith and no need to worry about bumping into mount.
• I can easily browse the sky from cluster to cluster manually
• I observed a flying plane from a distance
• It is so much faster/easier to find targets with astrohopper than with device and see what is around
• observed some nebulae, galaxies etc.

I wanted a manual mount and it is an excellent one!

Obviously 150mm or 200mm is way better. I sometimes use my 102/660 scope on galaxies and results are obviously way better.

Also I use mostly 5s subs.

I just wanted to show an example. I find myself using mono more than my color camera because both of speed and imx178mm is better than my asi224mc

On 01/03/2024 at 14:35, PeterC65 said:

Does this make sense?

Absolutely. I myself use Mono camera (Meade based on IMX178) frequently, especially on objects like galaxies.

Honestly being mono it gives more feeling of visual like.

Here few days ago my short session. 

SVBony sv501p 60/400 achromat, AZ GTi az-mode, Meade IMX178 Mono, IR/UV cut, software Android tablet with OpenLiveStacker

Most of them around a minute or so (because I have a very little patience) - also some absolutely need more time 🙂 

6 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

You'll have to take the motor/worm assembly off the mount and investigate.

 

I did and actually there is a good manual on how to fix it: https://www.nexstarsite.com/download/ReplacementNexStarIAltitudeBearingsV2.pdf

I probably will do it. But actually I prefer manual mount and I wanted manual mount from the beginning. Tracking isn't important for me.

I got it used from B&H Photo so I have no idea when it failed.

It was actually under 3 month warranty. The problem was from the start, but I didn't diagnose it properly and I thought it was just a basic backlash. Only after 4-5 month of use I tried to configure backlash compensation I realized that even value 100 is not enough I understood something wrong and found some other video with the same issue so I got a hint.

I disassembled the cover and found what happens. Unfortunately the warranty was not valid any more.

Just to want to summarize the issue and solution (in case somebody finds it).

The problem is load bearing that failed. It is apparently a very common issue.

• One solution is to get a new motor (and I assume there is a good reason why it is listed as one of common spare parts by Celestron) I've seen them online for around $150 before taxes/shipment
• Another is to replace bearings. Here is a good description of how to do it and were to order a new bearing: https://www.nexstarsite.com/download/ReplacementNexStarIAltitudeBearingsV2.pdf 
• However, when I originally got the NexStar SE8 I wanted a manual mount in first place. So I went 3rd way and disassembled both motors, board and the cover with batteries tray and converted the mount to manual! 

I strapped a phone with AstroHopper for finding objects as I wanted from the beginning, removing the board and batteries tray allowed me to reach zenith with 2" diagonal and 2" visual back without problems (on NexStar SE it limited to around 65-70 degrees due to diagonal size), and make it all much more convenient

The only issue I find that there is no clutch on Alt Axis, so when I remove/add heavy diagonal CG changes and I need to be careful so the scope does not move forward/backward on its own. I think I'll add a small lock to prevent movement for assembling/disassembling the mount.

Now I'm much happier because I didn't liked/wanted the robot in first place. Yesterday I observed many open clusters M35, 36, 37, 38, M41, M48, M47, M50 and of course Moon and M42 Orion - it was much better! 

Regarding iOS - it does not allow direct access to USB like Android - so developing an app that can access different kind of cameras is just impossible. On Android it is simpler (but also not straight forward)

OpenLiveStacker supports ZWO, ToupTek, DSLR/DSLM and USB Video Class cameras. So you can connect the camera directly and do live stacking on your Android phone or (better) tablet.

I suggest go over manual: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual/

Disclosure: I'm the author of OpenLiveStacker

The video below explains it the best.

The axis that suppose to move the alt grear is shifting and creates huge backlash...

Have anybody an idea how to fix it?

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I have an asi290mc and the app works great with it.  Sometimes it drops the connection to the camera, but I suspect the cables, not the app.  However, when this happens the app gets 'stuck' and won't close properly even when I click on the close and exit button.  I have to actually force stop the app.  Not a biggie, just thought I'd mention.

 

One thing I notices that it can be easy overload the app. Finally Android with ARM isn't PC with i7. So If your sensor resolution is large (also 290mc is way withing reach) I'd recommend using binning or ROI, especially if working with short exposures. I try to do my best to prevent it but sometimes it may just overload processing pipeline with large memory consumption and in some cases it may just take too much time to "unstack"

I may need develop some memory control to prevent something like that, but that isn't trivial,

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I also have a Canon M50 and it works great with it.  I can't seem to be able to change the iso through the app though, but it works on the camera.  Otherwise everything seems fine.

 

Are you setting the camera to manual - "M" mode? Does it list ISO control in the list or not?

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I have the app installed on a google pixel 7pro and I tried using the internal camera.  It works fine if set to the default auto exposure and iso, but when switching to manual, the iso and exposure values are some strange floating point range that are not accepted no matter what values I put in.  I tried valid ones from the specs on the camera, but none of those work either.  It gives a not valid value or something like that.

 

Can you please send the logs:

1st enable camera debugging in main enterance

2nd get in and try to set exposure.

Get the logs log.txt and android_camera.log from Android/media/org.openlivestacker/OpenLiveStacker/debug

I want to see if there is something I miss

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

Another minor bugaboo is that even after I close and exit the camera app, much later, like minutes later, I get a phone notification of so many frames stacked and such.  Not sure why the delay and why still the notification even after the app has closed.

What android version is it? I noticed this stange behavior on Android 10 sometimes, and it isn't really consistent. As general android app that runs in background (and you want it to to be able to run long sesssions) need to generate some notifications. Probably something with cleanup doesn't work well but I wasn't able to figure why.

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

Oh, minor ask.  Is there a way to incorporate some form of focus aid to the streaming view? 

Good question, it is something that was asked like estimation of image sharpness etc for focusing. 

I mostly use Bahtinov mask but I understand that some numeric aid can be useful especially for solar observations when Bahtinov isn't that useful.  Hadn't get into it yet. Since it requires some kind of registration. I probably need to open a feature request for one.

Quote

 Like maybe the ability to zoom the image past 1:1 would be nice to be able to gauge star size.

Generally you can zoom past 1:1 but if your resolution is very large it is may not be enough. Simplest is to select a small ROI and than zoom.

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

But I've been having lots of fun with it. 

Thanks. 

And know this kind of reports are very valuable since they give me point to what guys a looking for and help prioritizing stuff. 

16 hours ago, RobinH said:

is it possible to use astrohopper with the phone upright?

Not yet, also it is technically possible to add such a feature.

The biggest concern in such a case is accuracy. The current placement provides most optimal accuracy. 

Ok good news... OpenLiveStacker is now in Google Play - you can install it from there

28 minutes ago, rojay said:

Thanks. It's great for DSOs, but I was wondering particularly about stars: I see you can search for names like Polaris, but is there a way to do e.g. Beta Lyr or an HD number etc?

No only named stars I have in DB. I try to keep DB small to make it easily downloadable.

If you want specific objects not in the catalog you can just add them as user objects.

On 20/12/2023 at 18:27, MartinB said:

This has a live view facility with the image delivered to a phone or tablet.  I would like to be able to use this set up at our astro society to show the live view image on our large monitor via a windows PC

OpenLiveStacker uses web based UI - so its UI actually runs inside web browser.

If your windows PC and the android are at the same wifi network and connected you can just open http://IP.OF.YOUR.ANDROID:8080 and you'll access the web UI and all features of live stacker.

5 hours ago, rojay said:

Hi, quick question: does the search function work for stars by catalogue number? I see it works for proper names, are their other options? Thanks.

Yes you can search for example M31 or Andromeda, you can search ngc451 and "Owl Cluster"

Just prepend with M for messier or NGC for NGC catalog

Versions 25 & 26 released: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/releases/tag/beta26

Changelog of 25+26:

• Fixed bug #78 Starting stacking stream for DSLR/gphoto can get stuck sometimes
• Fixed but #77 Default Image format for Android camera likely too large for phone to process
• Added support of synthetic exposure - adding adjecent frames as they are single exposure - it is useful for cases max exposure is too short and there is not enough signal to even perform registration, for example smartphone cameras or UVC cameras like sv105
• Updated touptek SDK to version 20231210
• Added support of removing calibration frames from the database
• Added support of mono8 to UVC
• Show thumbnail automatically when working with delay so you don't need to open one

And the biggest news of all I submitted it to Google Play... now it is in review. I hope it will pass and finally it would be downloadable from Google App Store and there will be no need to install it via APK.

7 hours ago, Stu said:

Nothing clever, just attached the phone to the eyepiece with the scope on an EQ tracking mount. When held absolutely steady, the phone engages Astro mode and it will take a 4 minute exposure made up of 16 second subs. That’s what generated the result posted.

Interesting what is max exposure that can be set for the camera on your phone... Almost every phone even with good camera I tested had top 0.5s exposure.

Show must go on... 

Version Beta24 released: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/releases/tag/beta24

Changelog

• Android camera is now supported (named Internal):
  • Minimal Android version is Android 7
  • Features: controls of exposure, iso , wb, zoom, focus.
  • Support of jpeg, raw and mono output formats (from YUV), simulated mono16 - binning of mino8 without loosing accuracy
• Gphoto2/DSLR updates
  • Added support of target capture - save on SD card on in memory.
  • Added option not to remove files - to save sequence for post processing offline on SD Card
  • Fixed sequence of image reading - not waiting for capture trigger but rather to file saved. It workaround some capture failures however adds restriction that only one image type can be saved per trigger - either Raw or Jpeg - but not both. Similar behavior to Indi
  • Improved memory useage performance for binning of raw images
• Fixed bug that caused live stream instread of stacked stream to be displayed upon return to live view
• Fixed support of RGB touptek cameras
• Updated ToupTek SDK to version 20231121

Note support of Android camera is experimental.

One issue noticed: default image size is maximum and it can make the app to be stuck. It is better to use images of not bigger than 2MP at most weather raw or jpeg

1 hour ago, bilkusg said:

My canon camera has died

Ohhh...

Also I thought you are trying Sony A6000. Does it work?

On 29/09/2023 at 13:11, bilkusg said:

Is this expected behaviour, or would you like some logging information?

So can you give logs so I can review what is going on?

At least on canon I have is configured to save both raw and jpeg. So after each shot I download one of them according to stream type and delete them.

Also can you please post both camera and ols logs? You can turn camera log from settings 

Some testing from yesterday using OpenLiveStacker with DSLR: Canon 7D, 50mm, 2s exposure no tracking, pointing using AstroHopper.

Picture below is area of Sagitta, about 1m total exposure (not much good views from balcony)

Brocchi's Cluster is visible in the low right corner.